FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2016, file photo, LSU running back Leonard Fournette greets fans as he arrives at Tiger Stadium before an NCAA college football game against Alabama, in Baton Rouge, La. Fournette will sit out the 19th-ranked Tigers' match-up with No. 15 Louisville in the Citrus Bowl, a decision that ends Fournette?'s highlight-filled college career.

Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey reacts after scoring at touchdown on the opening kick-off of the 2016 Rose Bowl against Iowa.

FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2015, file photo, LSU running back Leonard Fournette (7) hurdles tight end Colin Jeter (81) as he rushes against Texas Tech during the first half of the Texas Bowl NCAA college football game in Houston. Fournette will sit out the 19th-ranked Tigers' match-up with No. 15 Louisville in the Citrus Bowl, a decision that ends Fournette?'s highlight-filled college career.

FILE - In this Nov. 26, 2016, file photo, Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey (5) leaps into the end zone on a 23-yard touchdown reception during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Rice, in Stanford, Calif. McCaffrey will skip his senior season to enter the NFL draft. McCaffrey announced his decision on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016, saying he has done everything he could in college and playing in the NFL has been his dream since childhood.

The suspicion is that a significant majority of college players who are asked to play in bowl games would rather not.

Especially after 12 games and obligatory year-long football.

It means extra practices and tedious banquets. It means four or five days in a locale that isn’t on the cover of Conde Nast Travel. There’s nothing wrong with Montgomery, Shreveport or Memphis, but let’s not act like this is bucket-list stuff.

Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey and LSU’s Leonard Fournette are passing up their bowl games – the Sun Bowl vs. North Carolina for McCaffrey, the Citrus Bowl vs. Louisville for Fournette.

They are publicly supported by teammates. Privately envied, too.

The two cases are different. Fournette is projected to go high in the first round of the NFL draft, but LSU got 285 yards and four TDs from Derrius Guice, his replacement, against Texas A&M.

McCaffrey, a junior like Fournette, is more central to Stanford. He also is slotted for the second round in some mock drafts.

More power to McCaffrey and Fournette if they are the true pioneers in a wave of bowl blowoffs that somehow rots the system from within.

But that will not happen as long as the networks, particularly ESPN, need the programming, and as long as live sports are such a sensation, and as long as Dollar General and Motel 6 need this moment to spread their logos.

The Sun Bowl is famous for its joyous full-court press of “hospitality.” In the old days, the committee would entertain teams and media with rowdy nights in Juarez, Mexico. That’s no longer applicable, but nobody ever went home thirsty from a Sun Bowl, even with the late-morning kickoff.

But we’ve seen two USC teams march into a Sun Bowl as glumly as if it were a big sister’s piano recital. The Trojans were humiliated by TCU and Georgia Tech on CBS. They got nothing out of the trip except a key chain.

And, yeah, coaches routinely leave for better jobs and leave the bowl game to an “interim” assistant, without repercussion.

And, yeah, schools fire their coaches before bowl games. Who could forget the Illinois-UCLA Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl classic in San Francisco, after Ron Zook and Rick Neuheisel were both given the big haircut?

And, yeah, the players don’t get compensated, other than a basket of parting gifts, while the schools and their conferences gobble up the TV money. The team doesn’t get a vote, either.

You can accept all that and still be left cold by McCaffrey and Fournette.

Naive as it might seem, there is a band-of-brothers aspect to this. They suffer together through wind sprints. They shiver and they sweat. The guys who blocked for McCaffrey don’t consider the Sun Bowl an optional activity. They get one last shot at a shared experience, one that links them forever. They get a chance to say goodbye.

Some will say McCaffrey and Fournette shouldn’t risk injury. They cite Jaylon Smith, the Notre Dame linebacker who wrecked his knee in the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State and lost high first-round status.

Except Smith did get picked in the second round by Dallas and is making $4.5 million this year. He will play next year. With all the rehab comes no remorse. Smith tweeted he would do it all again, the same way.

Myles Garrett, the Texas A&M pass rusher and the probable No. 1 overall pick in April, is playing Kansas State in the hallowed Texas Bowl in nearby Houston. He says he’s still in the lineup.

This just in: You get hurt playing football. And you can’t control when. An NFL study says 26 percent of the ACL tears are caused without contact, as was the case with Minnesota Vikings QB Teddy Bridgewater.

This goes to the issue of how much you love the game, what kind of teammate you are. NFL scouts notice and prize this. If McCaffrey bails on his boys in college, what keeps him from half-stepping his way through empty NFL games in December?

Yet here’s the interesting part. McCaffrey didn’t mention the risk of injury in his announcement. He said he was devoting Sun Bowl week to preparing for the draft. Have fun, guys, send a postcard.

Most of the media has lauded McCaffrey’s and Fournette’s business sense. Whether they would have applauded the same decision by Brian Bosworth or Johnny Manziel, we don’t know.

Stanford, LSU, the Sun Bowl and the world at large will survive all this. But drop the pretense and just say you don’t want to play. Most will understand. After all, a man has to save himself for the NFL combine.

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